The start of a new academic term is always a busy and exciting time of year at P&S, and the start of the 2009-2010 year will be welcomed with a sense of energy and anticipation as we launch a new curriculum, unveil new educational space, and begin recruiting students for an innovative educational program with our longtime upstate affiliate, Bassett Healthcare.

As explained in this issue’s cover story, our new curriculum will be introduced to the incoming Class of 2013 in late August. Everyone involved in the process of reshaping the P&S education is excited about the transformative effect it will have on our students. The P&S experience, already unique, will be strengthened by the curricular changes, which will include earlier contact with patients, more teambased group learning, and a range of new “majors” in which students will develop a deeper level of knowledge and expertise.

This fall we expect to complete our ambitious renovation of the lower levels of the Augustus C. Long Library in the Hammer Health Sciences Center. The state-of-the-art Hammer Health Sciences Teaching and Learning Center will have 30,000 square feet of classrooms and modern study spaces with a new entrance from Haven Avenue.

Also this fall, recruitment begins for our new “campus” in Cooperstown. We will admit 10 to 14 additional P&S students who will complete preclinical studies in New York and then pursue their clinical clerkships within Bassett’s distinctive longitudinal health care management system. The ideal applicant is an individual who meets the high standards required of all P&S students but also has an interest in practicing primary care or rural medicine and learning about health care from the perspective of an integrated system of hospitals and community health centers across an area the size of Connecticut. We will welcome our new Columbia-Bassett students  members of the P&S Class of 2014  in the fall of 2010.

P&S has a glorious tradition in medical education. We believe these upcoming changes will allow us to preserve and enhance the best of these traditions while simultaneously modernizing in ways that will ensure our preeminence as the best place to learn how to be a great physician or surgeon.